There are a variety of tents. Usually, small-to-medium-sized tents are used for camping and large pavilion type foldable tents are used as outdoor sunshades.
An existing pavilion type tent includes supporting poles, an upper frame supported by the supporting poles and a tent cloth coving the upper frame. The shading area a tent can provide is directly proportional to the area formed by outer sides of the tent cloth. One way to increase the shading area is to enlarge the upper frame, for instance, by increasing the lengths of the poles constituting the upper frame. A drawback of having longer poles is that the folded tent may not be compact. In addition, to support a larger upper frame, additional supporting poles and/or other auxiliary elements are needed to ensure the stability of the tent. As a result, the weight of the tent is increased.
Another way to provide a larger shading area is to design a tent or tent frame with eave supporting frames. For instance, FIGS. 9 and 10 illustrate an existing tent including eave supporting frame 4′ provided on an outer side of each supporting pole 1′. Eave supporting frame 4′ includes eave main pole 41′ and eave auxiliary pole 42′. One end of eave main pole 41′ is pivotally connected to fixed seat 23′ at the top end of the supporting pole 1′ and the other end is connected with an outer side of the tent cloth. One end of eave auxiliary pole 42′ is pivotally connected to sliding block 43′ slidably coupled with supporting pole 1′. The other end of eave auxiliary pole 42′ is pivotally connected to eave main pole 41′. Eave supporting frame 4′ and upper frame 2′ can be folded and unfolded together. It should be noted that sliding block 43′ is necessary to ensure the proper folding and unfolding of the tent frame.
However, the configuration of eave supporting frame 4′ with two poles (main and auxiliary poles) and additional sliding block increases the total number of poles and other elements needed for making a tent frame. It also makes the structure of the tent frame relatively complex. It further increases the size of the tent frame when folded.
In another existing tent frame, eave poles are slidably coupled to the fixed seats or the upper poles of the main frames. The eave poles cannot be folded or unfolded along with the main frame. Instead, the eave poles have to be manually and separately operated. For instance, the eave poles have to be manually pulled out after the main frame is unfolded, and have to be manually pushed in (or taken out) before folding the main frame. As such, the tent/tent frame is inconvenient to use.
Given the current state of the art, there remains a need for eave structures and tent frames that address the abovementioned issues.
The information disclosed in this Background section is provided for an understanding of the general background of the invention and is not an acknowledgement or suggestion that this information forms part of the prior art already known to a person skilled in the art.